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Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Alki’s Lady Liberty

Posted by on June 13 at 18:41 PM

Sorry about the light Slogging—a virus or food poisoning or God’s divine vengeance knocked me out mid-day on Monday, and I’m only just now pulling my head out of the toilet. I won’t go into the gruesome details…

But I will jump in and make a comment about an item up on Seattlest…

Alki’s Lame Statuette of Liberty

Not sure how often you make it out to Alki, but apparently there’s a tiny Statue of Liberty on the beach over there that’s falling apart. There’s a group of people trying to recast the thing in bronze and by the looks of their fundraising meter they’re almost there, but can we stop for a second and ask whether we can’t come up with something better than a tiny Statue of Liberty?

Isn’t there already one of these somewhere out east that’s, like, full size and meaningful and in fact connected with that city via the unbreakable bond of Ghostbusters II? Our little one seems kind of like the mini Stonehenge that drops down behind Spinal Tap in the movie. “The Northwest Program for the Arts would like to present to the city…Lady Liberty!” and two people step aside and there it is. Tiny and bronze and a copy of something that exists somewhere else. Do all of our statues have to be so kitchy?

LadyLib.jpg

I made it out to Alki twice last week, Seattlest. And while I agree that Seattle’s fifty-year-old Lady Liberty is small and kitchy, Seattle itself was a smaller, kitchier place back then. I don’t think the fact that New Yawk City has a bigger, older Lady Liberty isn’t a good reason to scrap our own. And isn’t there something meaningful about one Lady Liberty on the East Coast facing Europe and another on the West Coast facing Asia? (Now if we could only get one in, say, Texas facing Mexico and South America—and to hell with bronze, make that one out the bones of the Minutemen.) When you consider the United State’s long history of anti-Asian immigration policies (to say nothing of the internment of the Japanese), an east-facing Lady Liberty is that much more meaningful.

But it is too small—the scale is all wrong, it’s easy to miss, and it looks so fragile up there. While we’re raising money to re-cast Alki’s Lady Liberty in bronze, maybe we should go for broke and raise enough to have her re-cast at a respectable height, say 10’ or 12’.

And, finally, a link to the fine folks at CapitolHillSeattle —don’t want you guys to feel like we’re neglecting you.


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Having lived for a number of years in West Seattle, I'd recommend no dissing of Lady Liberty West.

Yes, it's small. Yes, you have to work at it to find it. But it's held very dear to the hardcore folks in Alki and adjacent areas. And it's been around half past forever, surving at least two vandalism attempts I know of.

This is a fight detractors could never win.

looks like it's facing Canadia

There's another small, unexplained statue of liberty in a river along Hwy 322 in Pennsylvania about 45 minutes outside of Harrisburg, pretty much in the center of the state. It faces to the east. It greets immigrants from... New Jersey??

The statue is a reference to Alki's original name of New York Alki, or "New York, bye and bye", which is what the settlers who landed there called it. That was before the statue, of course, and in retrospect seems a bit goofy. But having a piece of crap bad-reproduction statue made out of papier mache or whatever it is is classically Seattle. This in a town that thinks that the huge diarrhea-looking thing under the Fremont Bridge is "art".

There are (or were) about 250 of these originally.

It's also of course a nod to the original settlers who, in 1851, after spending a few miserable days and nights being rained upon amidst the mud and clam shells of the point, decided to name their new city "New York Alki", which in the Chinook trading language used by the various tribes of the area meant basically, "New York - whenever".

Also, the original name of beach area around the point was, "Coney Island", another obvious NYC reference, and even the amusement park that existed for many years at the mouth of the Duwamish River just to the SE was named after New York's famed "Luna Park".

So, there's a lot of New York history surround the "little Lady Liberty", that shouldn't be shunted aside just because of some perceived West Coast inferiority complex.

If we are going to have a reproduction anything from NYC, too bad it couldn't be a small scale subway.

Yes! A smokefree, dog friendly small scale subway that has to run quitely! Small scale enough that no fatties can fit! Get it goin'!

There's also a mini Statue of Liberty in Omaha in Hanscom Park facing an apartment complex called (cue the eerie music) THE TWIN TOWERS.

But it also faces AWAY from the Mutual of Omaha headquarters which I take as a rejection of private health insurance.

.....or is it Turner Park?

Nothing against Lady Liberty Jr. (and I fully support the idea of a bigger bronzed version) but what Alki really needs is a GAY BAR.

Seriously. It's a shirtless no-brainer.

Gasp! Harsh words for our Statuette of Liberty? Guys (and gals?), please remember what a role it played in our civic mourning after 9/11. It's a landmark and a treasure, like it or not. Go back to critiquing EMP or something.

I've lived in west seattle for 7 years now and every summer the torch or the crown or some other not-so-hard to remove part of mini lady liberty gets stolen and it is always replaced. I think we've spent enough money on this thing already.

There happens to be one in a park in Medford, Oregon too. I'm not sure who exactly that one is welcoming. Tweakers?

"Sorry about the light Slogging—a virus or food poisoning or God’s divine vengeance knocked me out mid-day on Monday, and I’m only just now pulling my head out of the toilet."


Hmmmm. And wasn't it Friday that you were demanding cookies from Megan, and she was showing signs of rebellion?

Perhaps you've been had, Mr. Savage. You've pushed yet another law-abiding citizen over the edge.

Beware the "puppet" bearing cookies.....

Looks like we hit an itsy bitsy Slog nerve. Oh well. Thanks for the link. (re-commenting because our first attempt got stuck in Slog review apparently :) )

Dude, you live on the West Coast of North America: Asia is *not* to the east.

Whoops—sorry about that east/west thing. A product of American schools, you know.

Also, Megan did make me cookies—I had two on Monday at 11, and by 12:45 I was sick as a dog. Hm... Megan, did you poison me?

Well, those Seattlest folks aren't exactly local, are they? So they can be forgiven for not finding the same pride in quirky local icons.

Weren't these mini-Liberties a Boy Scout thing in the '50s? I have a vague recollection of it being a Boy Scout thing.

Which only supports the need for a gay bar on Alki.

Hey, whaddya mean by "not local"? Everyone who writes for the site lives here -- though as is typical for this town, very few of us were actually born here. Except Seth.

Also, not all of us are anti-mini-Liberty.

If the choice were between an Alki miniature of the Statue of Liberty and an Alki miniature of the Seattle Space Needle, I'm glad that they went with Lady Liberty instead of Tiki Torch.

Oh please - there's nothing worse than a Seattlite whining about the Space Needle.

Those same pretentious dorks would bore you to TEARS with talk about the Eiffel Tower, just so you'd be sure to know they'd been to Europe.

I happen to think the Needle is beautiful. It was more beautiful before they put that stupid banquet level on it, but it is still an amazing structure. Very graceful.

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